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Hi everybody, this is Flavien. First I would like to congratulate Keith on becoming a father ! Of course, he’s been pretty busy ( what an understatement ) this week with the arrival of his child. But although the timing was pretty bad, I’m happy to report that we successully released the pre-alpha patch 0.2 as we announced last week. So far the feedback from dev-tier backers has been very good and they seem to have a lot of fun with the new build. That being said, let’s have a look at the main features of the new version. A fan-made video is also available, thanks to SpaceJay:

Battle test

Patch 0.2 main features:

Scalable network refactoring: we do now support hundreds of ships / potential players in a single battle. This is no longer a far-distance dream; this has already been tested with our US-East server and seems to be working well, even with larger battles and no instancing.

AI / bots: the server is now populated by dozens of bots that fly around and hunt each other ( or hunt players ), around points of interests such as space stations. Bots are still experimental and not guaranteed for the release, but we feel like they add a lot to the game experience so we’ll do our best to integrate them into the final game. There’s also an AI commander that controls the flow of the battle and spends team credits to calls for reinforcements on hot battle spots.

Improved HUD / UI: while those are still placeholders for the most part, we’ve introduced a number of enhancements such as a chat, mission objectives, warnings, new target indicators and more. We’re aware that battle / teammates awareness is an issue, but we have a lot of ideas to improve it in the future. Placeholder voice commands have been introduced, as well as wheel-based radial menus for various ship systems.

New content: a brand new icy planet is now available. Check out the pictures or the video stream below to have a taste of how it looks like. It’s personally become my new favorite planet There’s also a giant asteroid ( almost a miniature moon ) available around the gas giant.

Capital ships are now available: again, they’re mostly placeholders ( don’t forget ships are mostly unfinished and untextured )… but for the first time, players can experience them, and even try to fly them on a planet’s surface… which can lead to some pretty hilarious moments.

I streamed a presentation of the new patch last Monday; if you haven’t seen it yet, you can see the game in action here:

Next steps:

Now that this pre-alpha patch is out of the door, which has sorted out most of the technical / refactoring issues, iterating on gameplay is going much faster. However, before we can deliver the alpha ( probably around Q1 next year ), we still need to add more content and gameplay:

Functional factories and land bases, so that players can attack / destroy / protect them. Those will generate credits for your team which then gets redistributed. The art for those is almost ready.

New weapons and missiles, as there’s only one weapon implemented in game at the moment ( generic blasters ). Also, auto-aiming turrets, which will make capital ships playable. At the moment they fire in a straight line, and they’re so slow that aiming smaller ships is impossible. But this will get fixed before the alpha is out.

A star-system map, showing the various objectives and hot spots, allowing players to coordinate with each others.

And of course, there will be a lot of bug fixing and polishing before we can deliver this alpha. More work on the atmospheric flight model ( which is pretty basic right in the current version ), more work on warping, shields, controllers, interface etc.

If you want to see more, you can head on to our forums where you can find more screenshots and videos of the latest patch.

Hey everybody. As we’ve done last January, we’re going to organize a new alpha play-test week-end next week. Anybody that pledged at the alpha (or above) tier level on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo is eligible to participate.

Q. I linked my backer’s e-mail to my I-Novae account but no pledge appears in the access check page

A. You can contact us at: contact (AT) inovaestudios.com

Please mention your I-Novae account name/e-mail, your backer’s original e-mail as well as your pledge/tier level. Note that Keith is currently busy with his newborn baby, so please give us some time to investigate your situation and answer; it might take many days.

Q. Once the alpha week-end starts, how/where do I download and install the game ?

Download the installer, then log in to your I-Novae account. In the launcher, you’ll see a button to install and play the game. Note that once you’ve launched the game, the loading times can be pretty long (many minutes) as we haven’t optimized these yet. This is normal, do not kill the process.

Q. Is there a community chat or something where I can meet other players, or interact with the developers ?

A. A mid-end current-gen computer or a high-end older-gen computer should run the game pretty well. For example, a 3.4 Ghz+ Intel (or amd-equivalent) quad-core + 8 GB of RAM + an Nvidia 970 GTX should allow you to play in good conditions (~60 fps) in 1080p.

Q. I pledged for the beta, can I participate ? If not, when will I have the chance to ?

A. As we’ve explained multiple times in the past updates, development has been going slower than originally estimated, so the new estimate dates are around early 2018 for alpha release and mid-to-end 2018 for the beta release. During this time we’re going to organize more “open” test week-ends. This one is for alpha+ backers only, but starting next year, we’re going to organize play week-ends for beta testers too. Your time will come :slight_smile:

If you cannot wait, you can still upgrade your pledge to alpha level or above in your account settings:

In other news, we’re doing good progress on importing all the new factory / military base assets to the project and prepare them for integration into the next patch, which is currently planned for this week-end. It will also contain for the first time auto-aiming turrets for capital ships and experimental gimbal weapons. Note that it’s still a very early implementation, and we haven’t figured out the target selection mechanism for capital ships yet (atm it uses the current, single-target manual selection system of small ships), so in this first version it will likely feel pretty clunky to use.

Land bases have been added, they’re now available in various locations around planets / moons of Rethe Prime.

They’re all called “Factor 1” in game - forgot to set the name properly. They’re also lacking a polish pass on their properties, will do that later this week.

The smoke industrial effect on top of some modules isn’t correctly affected by daylight, so expect it to look white even at sunset, or bright even in the night side on a planet. Will also get addressed later

Weapons

Introduced gimbal weapons. Small weapons have a little bit of degrees of freedom - around 1 degree for the interceptor at the moment

Added auto-aiming turrets, which you can test on the corvette and capital ships

Currently this is a very very rough implementation, there’s no targets prioritizing, the weapons will all aim at the currently selected target

When a target is out-of-reach by a weapon, or not well aligned, the weapon will not fire, even if you press the fire button; this is normal behavior

However one downside is that for gimbal weapons, like on the interceptor, it’s no longer possible to aim at an offset from the center of the target (especially if that target is huge on screen), the weapon will not fire. While this is not a bug, this is only a temporary effect, and will get addressed in a future update.

Each weapon / turret aim-at direction is represented by a small dot on the HUD

Added energy cooldown for NPC AI bots, they should no longer fire without ever running out of energy. They’re still pretty bruttal (especially in this patch with the gimbal weapons), so difficulity will probably be reviewed soon too.

Ships

Turbo boost now increases maximum turn rate of all ships by +25%

Interceptor turn speed increased from 1.0 to 1.25

Interceptor linear thrust increased by 5 to 10%

Interceptor angular thrust increased by 50% (for yaw only

HUD / UI

Active players are now displayed on top of the leaderboard

Indicator bleep in/out sounds only happen when the actor is within a 1000 Km radius now. No more bleep spam from battles a million Kms away.

Target direction indicators around screen center are now using a filled color to be more easily readable, and are smaller

Planet name is now displayed in addition to point-of-interest name in the mission objective window

Fixed a small issue that could display 0 for hitpoints on HUD, yet the ship hasn't died yet (HP might equal 0.7, but HUD was rounding it at 0 instead of 1)

Misc

Since all ships are now much more effective at killing / focusing an enemy, balance is totally off. Ships will probably get a huge boost in survivability later this week.

New explosion effect: replace the old “fire” explosion with the Kickstarter’s plasma explosion. It looks a bit too dim, and pretty ugly for large explosions / capital ships. Need more feedback from players.

Hey everybody. As mentionned last week, we’re about to enter the alpha playtest week-end. If you are an alpha backer and wish to participate, make sure to follow instructions provided in last week’s update: HERE

Please keep in mind that the game is still technically in pre-alpha, therefore we ask everybody to be patient with technical issues and manager their expectations: the game is still pretty bare bones (no objectives you can attack, only one weapon available…), assets are a work-in-progress (none of the ships are textured yet, the cruiser and carrier’s assets are still simplistic placeholders, same for particle effects… ).

If you like what you see during this play-test, make sure to spread the word and let your friends know about us. And more importantly: we hope that you enjoy your time and have fun ! Any feedback is welcome, and we’re hoping to see lots of cool screenshots, videos and streams this week-end ! Make sure to post all your feedback in our forums: HERE

Patch 0.2.2.0

Last week we’ve released a new patch which amongst other things, adds military land bases to the game. See these pictures:

Bases (and other points of interests like space stations) are currently just static assets and you can’t interact with them. After the playtest week-end, we’re going to focus on these and add static defenses, which players can destroy. We’re also going to have a pass at destroying individual buildings (like the nuclear reactor providing energy) which is going to affect how the base works.

We’re also pretty soon going to introduce new weapons (with placeholder assets) and continue iterating on the gameplay. There’s still a lot before the game shapes up and is ready for the full alpha release.

Top-right corner: can you spot the land base as seen from this space station ?

On individual development news, between doing technical support and answering e-mails/PMs, Keith has found some time to fix the issue we encountered with patch 0.2 with our upload admin portal which failed for files over 2 GB. He’s also been working on various bug fixes for the installer and patcher, which should be made available right before the alpha test week-end starts.

On my side, a new patch is actually planned later today which should include the latest hotfix for crashes, reduce the bots AI difficulty and address some server side performance issues. Another patch will be released tomorrow, containing mostly polishing, bug fixing and balance adjustments (especially related to the AI and weapons).

On the art side, Jan went on a trip for a couple days, while Kristian is busy reworking some textures and adding more buildings for the factories and land bases. Jan should be back today and will be focusing on factories, however we are not sure they’ll be ready in time for tomorrow. I guess we’ll find out soon

The alpha play-test week-end is starting today 10 November at 20:00 GMT and will end around the same time on Monday 13 November.

Please keep in mind we’re still in pre-alpha and that you might encounter technical issues, framerate drop or server crashes. We’ll be working diligently all week-end long in order to address these issues are they come.

For all issues pertaining to the installer / patcher or access rights to the play-test ( make sure you've pledged at the alpha backer level or above ), please contact INovaeKeith by private-message on the forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

For in-game issues, crash reports or gameplay feedback, feel free to contact INovaeFlavien by PM on the forums.

Alternatively, you can post your feedback in the appropriate threads on the forums ( we’ll read everything, although with a bit of delays due to the busy week-end )

or send us an e-mail at: contact (at) inovaestudios.com

Thanks everybody for your participation and support. We hope you’ll enjoy this test week-end and look forward to hearing from you !

Factories

This patch introduces factories on various planets. At the moment there’s only 3 layouts, located on Sarake (Earth-like planet), Aresthia (Mars-like planet) and Semnoz (Ice planet).

Bug fixes

Fixed a small bug that prevented active players from being displayed at the top of the leaderboard

Fixed a stats bug with the kill count when it went negative

Balance and tweaks

Added a new gimbal weapon with 4 degrees of freedom to the bomber

Revamped AA light turrets on all capital ships. Destroyer should now be a lot more deadly towards enemy interceptors

Increased warp coefficient by a factor of x2. Added back a bit of strafing while in warp. Still not happy with the warp overall, will get reworked in the coming weeks

Decreased credits given after killing an enemy and revamped credits costs for all ships - they should now be more difficult to obtain and will require you to be more focused and careful

Other improvements

Target warp is reset when entering warp, which should prevent players from accidentely getting out of warp as the warp drive is engaging

Our alpha play-test week-end has ended and I would like to thank everybody who participated. It seems like everybody enjoyed its time and had some great fun. The feedback has been extremely positive as usual and we’re happy with the outcome.

Many first-time players actually spent most of their time flying around and exploring the solar system, while others participated on the some of the big (50-100 ships) battles going around various points of interests. There was a couple of outstanding technical issues related to the installer (forcing a reboot after a Windows update) and the client (crashes related to the sound every 2-3 hours) but otherwise the experience was pretty smooth: the server was rock stable (not a single crash) although overloaded and the client’s framerate reports we got was also very good; a lot of people seemed to be impressed that they could already run the game at 60+ fps despite being a pre-alpha.

Of course there’s still a lot more to do, both in terms of tech/assets (we’re delaying the texturing phase until we can validate combat) or gameplay (we’re going to start adding more weapon types in the upcoming weeks, warping is still in a pretty horrid state, balance is off…).

A new high-quality fan-made video was recorded during this week-end showcasing the planets (in the first half) and combat (second half) thanks to SpaceJay:

I also streamed a bit of the event last Saturday, you can watch the replay here:

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Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Last week mostly consisted of working on making improvements to the game from feedback we received during our latest Alpha backer free-play weekend. The biggest areas of improvement included HUD icons and situational awareness, simplifying warp, fixing a server crash, optimization, and some bugs we discovered in our backend infrastructure. Overall the game ran pretty good however its VRAM consumption is becoming a serious concern. On extreme detail the game is currently using ~6.5gb of VRAM which is ~81% of your available VRAM on a GTX 1080. This is a common issue during game development. For example, when I was working on Gears of War 2, the entire engine team had to focus on optimizing memory usage with only ~2 months to go before shipping for all maps to be playable. Infinity: Battlescape will likely follow a similar trajectory.

[Alpha Backer Image] A destroyer over a factory

Along with the aforementioned tasks we’ve also started work on the next major gameplay update – which will focus on weapons. Weapons will fall into a handful of broad categories: energy weapons such as lasers and blasters, projectile weapons such as machine guns and cannons, and missile weapons such as torpedoes and, well, missiles. On top of these weapon categories we currently have 2 major design goals regarding weapons. The first is that ammunition limits will be a serious consideration within Infinity: Battlescape and we want them to be in the general ballpark of modern aircraft. It will be possible to use up all your ammunition thereby leaving yourself with 2 choices: either re-arm at a carrier, land base, or station or become a kamikaze pilot and pay the cost of a new ship.

[Alpha Backer Image] A battle over the volcanic moon of Cinder

Secondly, one of the major selling points of I:B is massive space battles. We want to balance gameplay such that around 30% to 40% of participants will die within the first ~30 seconds once the shooting begins. Missiles will have the highest degree of lethality however they will be in short supply. The expectation is that at the beginning of a battle the first wave, which will primarily consist of smaller ships, will unleash all its missiles and a whole bunch of pilots will immediately die in a massive fireball. At this point the war of tactics and attrition will begin as each side switches to energy and projectile weapons while selectively firing any missiles held in reserve. Lastly, just because someone shoots a missile at you it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to die. All ships will be fitted with some form of anti-missile countermeasures – which will also be finite. In smaller ships this will take the form of chaff/flares that help you evade missiles whereas capital ships will be fitted with anti-missile systems similar to what you see on modern warships.

[Alpha Backer Image] Ice worlds are particularly beautiful at night

There’s still a lot to say about weapons so we’ll continue with more details next week. Please keep in mind that weapons will require a tremendous amount of balancing and everything is subject to change in service to “fun”. That’s all for this week, until next time!

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Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. Continuing the discussion from last week we’ll be going into more details about weapons. To briefly recap there will be a couple of high level weapon categories: energy, projectile, and missile. Before I get into the details for each category I want to mention that our damage model has its own high-level categories including shield strength, shield HP, armor rating, and finally regular HP which represents the overall health of a ship’s superstructure. Last but not least there is one more variable to throw into this mix – the amount of ammunition you can carry for each of these weapon systems.

[Alpha Backer Image] An interceptor from the green team in the upper atmosphere

To kick things off I’ll start with energy weapons which come in two separate flavors: lasers and blasters. Lasers will be beam weapons similar to real life except that you’ll be able to see them because let’s be honest, lasers are so boring when you can’t see them. Lasers require enormous amounts of energy and therefore will only be available to capital ships and may come in different sizes. Blasters will be the equivalent of Star Wars style lasers and therefore have no foundation in reality. We just wanted a second energy weapon and we all love Star Wars so blasters, which can be mounted on smaller ships, is what we arrived at. Pilots flying ships heavily armed with energy weapons will have to be careful. On the one hand, you have weapons with an unlimited supply of ammunition in a game where ammunition matters, which is great if you’re going deep behind enemy lines. On the other hand, energy weapons draw from the same pool of energy as your shields and engines and depleting your energy can leave you extremely vulnerable. Damage attenuation from atmosphere and shields will be significant however energy weapons are largely immune to the effects of gravity. The weapon you currently see in the pre-Alpha builds of the game are blasters along with a mockup of our energy management system.

[[Alpha Backer Image] Blasters being fired in combat over Cinder

Next up is projectile weapons such as machine guns for smaller ships and cannons for capital ships. These will more or less behave as you would expect. Shields are less effective against projectile weapons however atmosphere and gravity can negatively affect their accuracy and damage output. Ships will be able to care a moderate amount of projectile ammunition which places their long-term effectiveness somewhere between missiles and energy weapons.

[Alpha Backer Image] A large space station in orbit over a planet

Lastly, we have missiles which come in two separate flavors: missiles and torpedoes. You may be wondering, since our space ships can’t fly in water, what exactly is a torpedo? Within Infinity: Battlescape a torpedo is a large missile that has been designed to maximize damage output against heavily armored targets at the expense of speed and maneuverability. Missiles will be largely impervious to atmosphere, gravity, and shields. Combined with significant damage output they will be extremely lethal however they do come with their own set of weaknesses. For starters you won’t be able to carry many of them. If your ship is configured to rely entirely on missiles and you find yourself in a protracted engagement you may, after an initial burst of lethality, quickly find yourself completely combat ineffective. Missiles are large and dumb enough to be targeted and destroyed by anti-missile systems or confused by chaff/flares. Countermeasures are quite cheap and each missile that doesn’t reach its target represents a significant loss of resources.

[Alpha Backer Image] The view of the world below an orbiting space station

As always the standard disclaimer applies - everything described here is subject to change pending the outcome of playtesting and balancing. Next week I’ll wrap up our overview of weapons by spending some more time discussing some of the tradeoffs players will face when choosing different weapon/ship combinations for various gameplay scenarios.